Silent Obscuration

Sara Ramezani is an Iranian urban planner and designer based in Serbia who has contributed to diverse urban development projects, including those focused on urban design for tourism, housing policy, and smart city initiatives. Beyond her professional pursuits, Sara is a photography enthusiast, trying to capture the essence of urban life. She is passionate about understanding the complexities of cities, exploring the symbiotic relationship between people and their environments, and illustrating these phenomena through photography.

Since the Industrial Revolution, humanity has been caught in an endless frenzy of construction and production. With the advent of machines, life took on a new form. Increasing urban populations demanded more infrastructure and development plans. Various ideologies have come and gone throughout this time, fueling this upheaval, and the Earth has witnessed rapid and endless transformations. The remnants of these eras and ideologies have become historical symbols embedded in nature. In Serbia, with its history of political upheavals and wars, the carcasses from failed, unfinished, or even destroyed construction projects like bridges, buildings, or gas pipes are scattered across cities, littering the land. But the Earth is forgiving, silently spreading its lush cover over the leftovers of disasters and unaccomplished ideas, concealing the hard, abandoned relics of the past. This photographic selection shows a series of abandoned construction projects in Belgrade from different periods and ideological eras of Serbia’s recent past: the early 20-century Old Railway Bridge, socialist era Hotel Yugoslavia, obsolete pipelines and abandoned construction machines, and a never-finished Aqua Park project from the newest, market economy period, all now silently rusting and being slowly covered by greenery.